Lost in Suburbia: Pass me a ‘flagel’ with cream cheese, please

“Ummm, this is good,” said my husband with a mouthful of food. “What is it?”

I looked up from the kitchen sink where I was doing dishes. “It’s a cronut.”

“A what?”

“A cronut. It’s part croissant part doughnut.”

He looked at me like I had two heads.

“I was actually going to get some duffins, but the cronuts looked better so I bought those instead.”

“What’s a duffin?” he asked hesitantly.

“It’s part doughnut part muffin. The cruffins and bruffins looked good too, but I didn’t want to go crazy so I just stuck with the cronuts.”

“What the heck are you talking about?” he said.

“A cruffin is part croissant part muffin and a bruffin is part brioche and part muffin,” I replied.

“Are you out of your mind?” he said.

I laughed. I didn‘t blame him for being confused. Ever since the cronut made its debut, it seemed like the food industry had been taken over by mad scientists. They were not only combining doughnuts and muffins, but just about any other kind of food you could think of. There were piecakens (a pie baked inside a cake), brookies (brownie and cookie), and cherpumples (cherry, pumpkin and apple pie). There were meatzas (a pizza with a ground beef crust), chocamole (avocado and chocolate guacamole) and turduckens (a chicken stuffed into a duck stuffed into a turkey). It was like Betty Crocker got it on with Dr. Frankenstein and they had Frankenfood babies.

I actually blame all this on the snooty dog people. When I was a kid, mixed breed dogs were simply called mutts. But then someone got the idea that they could charge money for a mutt if they came up with a cute name for a dog that came from two different breeds. Suddenly we were overrun with maltipoos, puggles, schnoodles and schnockers. I knew we had hit designer dog saturation when I met a woman with a dog that was part bull dog and part shih tzu, which, naturally, she said was a bullshihtz.

As the proud owner of a pair of jeggings (jeans and leggings), I was already down with the hybrid trend. But for my husband who couldn’t even bear to hear the word “spork” without cringing, this was all just a little too much for him. Still, I told him it was all really a big nontroversy, and he should just chillax, maybe put on a good romcom, and take a short staycation from all this nonsense.

“You know, this is all too much for me,” he finally said. “I’m going to work out.”

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I have a men’s fitness class.”

“What’s it called?” I wondered.

“Broga.”— For more Lost in Suburbia, follow Tracy Beckerman on Facebook at facebook.com/LostinSuburbiaFanPage or on Twitter at @TracyinSuburbia.